PRISTINA, July 23 (Hina) - Remains of 43 Albanians, killed during the Serbian regime's campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1998 and 1999 and exhumed from a mass grave at Batajnica outside Belgrade, were handed over by Serbian authorities
to UNMIK representatives in the town of Merdare on the boundary line between Serbia and Kosovo on Wednesday.
PRISTINA, July 23 (Hina) - Remains of 43 Albanians, killed during
the Serbian regime's campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1998 and 1999
and exhumed from a mass grave at Batajnica outside Belgrade, were
handed over by Serbian authorities to UNMIK representatives in the
town of Merdare on the boundary line between Serbia and Kosovo on
Wednesday. #L#
The bodies were identified at the Forensic Institute in Belgrade.
The head of the forensic department of the UN Mission in Kosovo
(UNMIK), Hose Pablo Barabyer, said that the victims' identities
would be additionally checked in the coming days.
According to him, of those 43 bodies 41 are believed to be the
victims of a massacre in the village of Meja near Djakovica
perpetrated on 27 April 1999. The remaining two bodies are believed
to be from the Suva Reka municipality.
Barabyer said that so far, 10 percent of bodies of killed Albanians
had been returned from Serbia where they had been buried as part of
Serbian authorities' bids to cover up crimes. The UNMIK official
called on Belgrade to step up the process of exhumation,
identification and hand-over of bodies of Kosovo Albanians.
(hina) ms